Following V-J Day, the Marine Corps faced the need for a rapid demobilization. With their job finished, the men who had fought the war were anxious to return home as quickly as possible so they could "get on with their lives." The American public was equally anxious to bring the men back home....
Common practice back then.

Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured. Mark Twain

Turning Ships into Artificial Reefs
Some naval vessels such as the U.S.S. Oriskany get a second life. Instead of being sent to ship-breakers, they get a second career as artificial reefs and are turned into habitat for marine species.

U.S.S. Oriskany
The largest of those is the U.S.S. Oriskany (nicknamed Mighty O, The O-boat, and Toasted O), a Essex-class aircraft carrier that was launched in 1945 and commissioned in 1950. It was sunk by the Navy 24 miles (39 km) south of Pensacola, Florida, in 2006, and its 44,000 tons became an artificial reef where 38 species of fish have been seen so far.

Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured. Mark Twain

In the 1990s, Kadena Air Base collected PCB-contaminated oil from "various locations on island" and leaks gave rise to a number of hot spots within the installation. Inside one mechanical room, contamination levels spiked at 17,000 mg/100cm2. The EPA's decontamination requirement for indoor areas - even those where access is restricted - stands at 10 mg/100cm2.

In 1993, investigators were concerned that PCB contamination may have spread so they recommended sampling the Hija River, which supplies drinking water to the base and the surrounding communities. It appears no such tests were ever conducted.

Crime scene photos: Some of the 108 barrels of toxic waste unearthed from former Kadena Air Base land.

In nearby water, dioxin levels peaked at 21,000 times safe levels. Due to the detection of the two herbicides, independent experts concluded Vietnam War era defoliants had been among the waste dumped there.http://apjjf.org/2016/09/Mitchell.html

Saturday 29 March 2003 02.05 GMT
First published on Saturday 29 March 2003 02.05 GMT
Hong Hanh is falling to pieces. She has been poisoned by the most toxic molecule known to science; it was sprayed during a prolonged military campaign. The contamination persists. No redress has been offered, no compensation. The superpower that spread the toxin has done nothing to combat the medical and environmental catastrophe that is overwhelming her country. This is not northern Iraq, where Saddam Hussein gassed 5,000 Kurds in 1988. Nor the trenches of first world war France. Hong Hanh's story, and that of many more like her, is quietly unfolding in Vietnam today. Her declining half-life is spent unseen, in her home, an unremarkable concrete box in Ho Chi Minh City, filled with photographs, family plaques and yellow enamel stars, a place where the best is made of the worst.
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Hong Hanh is both surprising and terrifying. Here is a 19-year-old who lives in a 10-year-old's body. She clatters around with disjointed spidery strides which leave her soaked in sweat. When she cannot stop crying, soothing creams and iodine are rubbed into her back, which is a lunar collage of septic blisters and scabs. "My daughter is dying," her mother says. "My youngest daughter is 11 and she has the same symptoms. What should we do? Their fingers and toes stick together before they drop off. Their hands wear down to stumps. Every day they lose a little more skin. And this is not leprosy. The doctors say it is connected to American chemical weapons we were exposed to during the Vietnam war." https://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/mar/29/usa.adrianlevy